Da Capo II – 06

At breakfast one morning, Yume brings up inviting Minatsu over for dinner again and reveals that Minatsu hasn’t been getting along very well with everyone in her class. Since he was supposed to look after her, Yoshiyuki is concerned, but Minatsu surprises him at school by cheerfully coming to his classroom looking for Anzu. She shows Anzu a notebook that appears to be a plan for world domination, but Yoshiyuki is more interested in how well they’re getting along. After class, he tells Koko that he has something to do and rushes off to follow Minatsu. He finds that she’s going home alone, but she stops at the park first and plays with a dog she encounters there. Yoshiyuki is surprised to see her so happy, but when he tries to invite her to eat at his house, she gets angry at him and declares that she hates meddlesome people like him. When Yume finds out about the argument later from Yoshiyuki, she also gets angry at him because she’s already bought the ingredients for dinner tomorrow, and she makes him fix all this since it’s his fault.

On the way to school the next day, Yoshiyuki is so occupied in thought that he bumps right into Minatsu. After they both fall down, he tries to give her back the notebook that she just dropped, but he first realizes that it’s a plan for world domination. Minatsu pleads for him to keep it a secret, and Yoshiyuki uses this chance to blackmail her to come with him to a cafe that afternoon after school. She’s so impressed by current cell phone 1seg technology that he ends up bringing her to an appliance store and then to an arcade where Minatsu plays a virtual zombie shooter game. Unfortunately, she gets so into it that she overheats, and when she wakes up again, her head is resting in Yoshiyuki’s lap. Minatsu first questions Yoshiyuki’s purpose for doing all this, so he tells her that there is no catch – he just wanted to play with her. She then asks what she is to him, and he answers that she’s a friend. Because she isn’t so sure about a machine being a friend, Yoshiyuki points out that she has feelings like normal people do.

With this in mind, Minatsu takes Yoshiyuki to the store with a robot maid on display and asks about their existence. She thinks that the maids are essentially the same as her, but they wouldn’t call them friends. Minatsu doesn’t like the way humans treat robots and thinks that even her own life has been dictated by humans without her own will. She then starts to leave, and, realizing why she hates humans, Yoshiyuki stops her so that he can apologize for what humans have done. He knows that him alone saying this accomplishes nothing, but he just wants her to feel glad that she woke up in this world, and he suggests that it’d be good for her to find out more about the world and the people in it. Yoshiyuki ends up bringing her home for dinner as planned, and Sakura is waiting for them when they get there. Sakura’s concern for how Minatsu is doing in school and Yume calling her an precious friend makes Minatsu realize that they’re not so bad, so she decides that being friends with them is okay.

I think the moral here is that it’s perfectly fine to completely abandon his girlfriend without telling her anything and go solve someone else’s problems. Seriously though, if they were going to focus on Minatsu, then why bother even showing that Yoshiyuki doesn’t tell Koko anything? Maybe it’s going to be the base for some conflict later on, however the show up to now hasn’t indicated that that it’ll be taking any route other than Yoshiyuki and Koko’s.

This episode wasn’t a complete waste though since we got a lot of character development for Minatsu, and I suspect they’re giving her extra screen time because she’ll play a big part in whatever sakura tree problem comes up at the end of the series – like the OP animation kind of suggests. In any case, we’re now halfway through the series, and I’m hoping that the second half will prove to be a bit more eventful than the first.

Niou:
It wasn’t a “fawning over the guy” thing, though it was a “Yoshiyuki and all are nice people” sort of thing.

As a game player, I liked this episode a lot. It’s not romantic and won’t interfere with his relationship with Koko, but I still like Minatsu’s story. There should be one more Minatsu episode before the end of the series.

Yup, I really don’t think this show is setting things up for anything like a “everyone loves Yoshiyuki” sort of plot. In fact, I don’t even think that Yume’s attitude is going to turn into some sort of love interest/rivarly, but we’ll probably see why in time. My impression of the anime so far is that it’s Yoshiyuki and Koko’s love story with a few other stories included for good measure. We’ll see…

Well, Niou, I should take one thing back after thinking about the episode a bit more. Although Yoshiyuki’s encounter with Mintasu wasn’t romantic at all, I guess it might still interfere in his relationship with Koko, or at least lead to a misunderstanding of some sort. We could figure it wouldn’t be smooth sailing to the end anyway. We’ll see… I guess judge it for yourself when you see the episode. :p

So, is there any real point to nanaka at this point, cause it is getting quite stupid at this point when a character is introduced and nothing much is done in terms of development. If she was removed and the others are left in, there would be no change what so ever. it would be very stupid if her development meant took place for only 1 episode considering that other characters would get a whole lot more.